Trump - Clown Genius

[jennypenny]

@IlliniDave: You could see Big Media's treatment of Trump as campaigning against him--one could argue that's how they want you to see it.

But people in show-business go by another adage: "There's no such thing as bad publicity."

Publicity is what they've given Trump in spades, and how they've starved Sanders at every turn. Who's benefited from it?

It's possible they didn't know what they were doing. IMO, it's also possible they know exactly what they're doing.

This is a screen shot of what was at the bottom of a NYTimes article I just read. I see Trump mentioned 12 times. There's one mention of Clinton, and Sanders is no where to be seen even though he came up big again yesterday. It's funny because I'm pretty sure the NYT is in Clinton's corner. I understand not mentioning Sanders, but they aren't helping Clinton with wall-to-wall Trump coverage.



I should mention that I wasn't reading an article about Trump, or even politics, that would have triggered those. I was reading an article about parenting differences between the rich and the poor.

[IlliniDave]

Most of the Trump mentions are intended to show ways in which Clinton is better from a generic democrat viewpoint. It might backfire because your typical Trump supporter supports him for the "wrong" reasons. I feel bad for Sanders getting ignored.

[JamesR]

It seems like this blatant bias in media coverage should be illegal. Heavily manipulating people's impression of what's going on could be considered to be "unfree speech" - speech that reduces people's freedoms.

As for NYT being in Clinton's camp, is that even true? Maybe that's what they want you to think while actually displaying 12 Trump articles and 1 Clinton article. I see a lot of comments about MSNBC being democrat leaning and Fox News being republican leaning, but maybe what matters more is where they direct the attention/publicity to, what type of stories they're actually running, and the general tone.

Edit: just came across https://www.quora.com/Is-it-true-that-F ... beral-bias

Just 7 percent of journalists are Republicans. That’s far fewer than even a decade ago.

The actual breakdown was 28% Democrat, 7% Republican, 50% independent, and 14% "other" (whatever that means). That might lead you to believe that reporters are mostly independent. However, 93% of DC based journalists vote Democrat

Maybe that explains why there's so many trump articles.. because he's not really a republican?

[IlliniDave]

Maybe that explains why there's so many trump articles.. because he's not really a republican?

In some corners what your "against" is much more important than what you are "for". Right now the key thing for a wide swath of the country is to be against Donald Trump.

Similarly, many of the people who support Trump (and Sanders and Cruz) do so mostly because they are against the status quo, not because any of them find those three to be truly likeable, outstanding candidates.

The further problem with Clinton is there's not much about her to be "for", further tilting the looking glass towards scrounging for not-Clinton things to be against.

[Dragline]

Maybe that explains why there's so many trump articles.. because he's not really a republican?

In some corners what your "against" is much more important than what you are "for".

This is both generationally driven and media driven.

Generationally driven in that the main Boomer generation political characteristic is to take whatever "side" they were on in the Vietnam era and stick with it, denigrating their opposites reflexively, and the main political Gen-X characteristic is to hold ourselves out as "free thinkers" who are against anything organized.

Media driven in that narratives are more exciting and attractive when you are pointing out something "bad" happening that people would naturally want to be against. People love ancient public shaming mechanisms and would love to be able to throw rotten fruit, which is also part of the psychological attraction for internet trolling. See http://www.prospectingmimeticfractals.c ... ary-people

[Spartan_Warrior]

@FFJ: I guess I have a different definition of "government action that affects my day to day life". I was thinking more along the lines of heightened security measures, militarized police, intrusions on privacy and legal rights, war crimes that heighten terrorist activity, et cetera, all of which I find far more likely outcomes of a Clinton or Trump presidency than Bernie Sanders. That, to me, is the difference between libertarianism and its opposite, authoritarianism.

The type of second-order economic effects you're talking about are speculative and ideologically premised. I could also argue that the lack of government action in terms of things like reigning in the big banks will harm your children's economic prospects as much (or, IMO, vastly more) than things like raising the minimum wage or free public college. Either argument would, of course, require the requisite ideological economic premises. E.g. I don't buy your premise that "all money the government spends comes from the people", just as you probably wouldn't buy my counter-premise that "all money the people spend comes from the government". Et cetera.

Like I said, that kind of thing is beyond the scope of the thread. Regardless, I would maintain that Sanders is quite libertarian by many measures and probably the most libertarian of the three remaining contenders.

Ron Paul on Bernie Sanders being pro-market and libertarian: http://redalertpolitics.com/2016/02/05/ ... ee-market/

Bernie also voted for Rand Paul's "Audit the Fed" legislation: http://thehill.com/policy/finance/26555 ... e-fed-bill

[Chad]

Trump being exposed, but I'm sure his supporters won't care.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/eli ... a8b933fef8

It's all emotion for the majority of them, so facts are not what matter in this contest.

[BRUTE]

what's with the dropping of microphones? brute is not current on this act as a source of status.

[Spartan_Warrior]

@FFJ: By that logic, you've clearly drunk the Faux News kool-aid.

Kinda going completely against your earlier gushing about exchanging viewpoints without insults, but okay.

[enigmaT120]

It's all emotion for the majority of them, so facts are not what matter in this contest.

That's what Scott Adams keeps saying. He also says it will work and get Trump elected. In a land slide.

[RealPerson]

It's all emotion for the majority of them, so facts are not what matter in this contest.

That's what Scott Adams keeps saying. He also says it will work and get Trump elected. In a land slide.

I think that is very possible, and I say that as someone who never thought Trump would make it past the first couple of primaries. I am not paying attention to any polling, because these are designed for a traditional two party lineup. This year is definitely not a typical situation. Plan on the polls being completely wrong because their underlying assumptions will be wrong. An election between a candidate being as establishment as they come (Clinton) and as unconventional as you can imagine (Trump) will provide for a fascinating November. This is the first election in many years that I may actually be somewhat interested in.

If Trump actually gets elected president it could change the American political landscape for a generation to come. The political rule book would be rewritten. The relationship with congress could be rough because a Trump presidency would make all members of congress somewhat nervous about their own political futures.

[Spartan_Warrior]

@FFJ: Fair enough. You don't watch Faux News. I don't drink Kool-aid. Now we're even.

Anybody following what happened at the Nevada Democratic Convention last night? More election-rigging shenanigans from the Democratic establishment: holding the vote early, refusing motions for recounts, creating their own rules out of thin air, and to top it off, Barbara Boxer (from California...) making an appearance to taunt Bernie supporters. It ended with the party leaders abruptly closing the meeting and fleeing behind a line of police.

http://heavy.com/news/2016/05/nevada-de ... e-youtube/

Looking forward to Philly.

[Chad]

I wasn't insulting Chad, I was chiding him for using someone as polarizing as Warren to make his point. Doesn't mean I disagreed with him; did you read the last sentence?

Just FYI, I didn't assume there was insult intended.

I also agree Warren is polarizing, but I think she is more right than wrong on banking/Wall Street (Definitely right on her comment about Trump University being a scam) and on Trump. Mainly because as finance becomes a larger percent of a countries GDP it seems to become destabilizing. The benefit it provides seems to drop as the percentage rises. Finance eventually seems to become just a cost without any addition back to productivity at high levels.*

https://tcf.org/content/commentary/grap ... ic-growth/

There are other studies I have read, but this was the easiest to find.

*To be clear, finance does benefit productivity/economy at slightly lower levels. Banks/Wall Street are not inherently bad, they are just easy to push over the cliff because a lot of what they do is very ethereal and can be scaled very rapidly. Much slower and more difficult for Tesla to ramp up production of the Model 3 than it is for Goldman to help create a bubble in mortgage backed securities. This one reason I support regulation for banks. Though, I'm sure there are parts of Warren's banking regulation I would disagree with.

[7Wannabe5]

My DS27 mentioned Ted Nugent as a possible running mate for Trump. That would be a brilliant move. He would totally win if he did that. I can see it now. The podium, the cheers, the patriotic banners, "Cat Scratch Fever" playing in the background as red, white and blue frisbees are tossed into the crowd. Like some bad dream I had in the back seat of a van in 1979.

[Ego]

No way. It's gotta be Trump/Palin. The Presidential race is a tag-team match. His partner has to understand the fine art of the suplex.

[BRUTE]

Mainly because as finance becomes a larger percent of a countries GDP it seems to become destabilizing.

is this just finance? brute would argue that in principle, any industry (or company (or government)) taking too large a position leads to this problem. for example, Chad can take a look at agriculture industry and the subsidies they still receive. or weapons manufacturers.

maybe the rule is just that power corrupts.

[Chad]

Mainly because as finance becomes a larger percent of a countries GDP it seems to become destabilizing.

is this just finance? brute would argue that in principle, any industry (or company (or government)) taking too large a position leads to this problem. for example, Chad can take a look at agriculture industry and the subsidies they still receive. or weapons manufacturers.

maybe the rule is just that power corrupts.

I'm not talking about power/corruption with that comment, though that can be a problem. I'm talking about efficiency/production, which is constantly changing and is vastly different based on the industry and time period. For instance, 200 years ago roughly 95-98% of the population worked in an industry that was connected to agriculture. At the time, it was appropriate. Now, we have less than 2% in this industry. If we bumped agriculture up to 5% we would have a lot of useless work being invented for that extra 3% whether they produced anything or not.

All I'm suggesting is that finance was too big relative to it's productivity, so they had to start inventing products no one/economy really needed or wanted to feed the beast. Unfortunately, because of the nature of the industry this probably means these products are financially dangerous to someone or the economy as a whole, as 99% of the appropriate products were already created.

[Spartan_Warrior]

So no one followed or has any thoughts on the blatant theft of democracy that happened at the Nevada Democratic Convention? I'm not really surprised, just curious.

I truly don't understand how anyone can vote for Hillary. I also find it utterly laughable how scared everyone is of "Trump the fascist" when fascism is already here. Certainly, Trump is a narcissistic billionaire buffoon who will fuck the economy worse and make us a bigger laughing stock than Bush. But anyone comparing him to Hitler first needs a closer look at Hillary, whose minions literally took authoritarian control of a democratic convention with the assistance of armed brown-shirts in jack boots.

[Riggerjack]

Certainly, Trump is a narcissistic billionaire buffoon who will fuck the economy worse and make us a bigger laughing stock than Bush. But anyone comparing him to Hitler first needs a closer look at Hillary, whose minions literally took authoritarian control of a democratic convention with the assistance of armed brown-shirts in jack boots.

Well, we find something to agree on...

Though, to be honest, I expect Hillary to be more of a "Landslide Lyndon" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyndon_B._Johnson

The penchant for making deals, sacrificing troops, and complete lack of integrity seem to fit. But half a century later, we're recovered. We'll never be what we could have been, without him. I'm sure that in the 2070's, we'll be over Hillary.

On the off chance she beats the bafoon.

[Riggerjack]

@as to the electioneering, that is politics as usual, with YouTube links. Nothing unusual, but now the cameras are everywhere, and the videos are ubiquitous.

My only surprise is how well Sanders is doing, running against the machine.